A few thoughts on this game

[Kray007]

I’m as unhappy as anyone with the loss.

Mary Poppins said that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, but I’m not sure that we don’t need a couple of cups to sugarcoat what went down yesterday.

I take some solace, though, in the fact that we’re not alone; once or twice a season, the inexplicable happens and upsets pop up like wildflowers in the desert after a spring rain. From Kansas City to Baltimore, from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, from Detroit to Pittsburgh, and points in between, a host of fans woke up this morning, scratching their heads, wondering what in the heck happened.

In Indianapolis, one simple explanation stands out… caught up in the holiday spirit, the referees gave an early Christmas present to the boys from Houston. How else to explain how they didn’t notice the clock ticking down to zero while they did notice a phantom pass interference? How else to explain a kick that missed the uprights but counted nonetheless

And speaking of missed extra points… from the moment he drove the ball wide of the goal posts, Badly’s missed kick hung over the game like a spectre that came back to haunt us in the end, like Marley‘s ghost in a Dickens’s tale. On the final series, if Houston’s lead had been three instead of four, they could have run Taylor up the gut on the final two plays, run out the clock, and sent Badgley out to send the game into overtime.

Among the Myriad factors that shaped the game, the first probably has to be the injury to Daniel Jones. The broken fibula robbed him of mobility, taking away the run pass option, the mobility that is such a big part of his game. A hobbled Jones couldn’t roll the pocket to escape pressure and probably showed up biggest at the pivotal moment when Tyler Warren was called in to execute what should’ve been a quarterback sneak.

Next up was the injury to Sauce Gardner. It’s possible, of course, the Houston’s receivers are just as productive if Gardner is on the field. I don’t believe that, but if you do, I have this Nigerian friend who needs help smuggling his fortune into the United States.

On the injury front, we come to the final leg of the trifecta….DeForest Buckner. In many ways, he’s the heart and soul of this defense. If he’s on the field, the run defense is stout, and he offers an interior pass rush that no one else on the team comes close to.

One injury probably doesn’t hurt, two stacks the deck against us, but three turns us into the Knight in “Monty Python And The Holy Grail,” hopping around on one leg, saying “Tis nothing but a nick.”

Other issues include the 3 or 4 dropped passes, one of which, to Downs, was critical.

Toss in a bunch of stupid penalties and the fact that you’re taking the field against an extremely talented Defense, loaded with talent at all three levels, and you had to feel at least a little trepidation going in.